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Rethink Robotics has launched the Sawyer Software Development Kit, a software upgrade designed for researchers and students to build and test programs on the Sawyer robot.

With a wide range of uses for university research teams and corporate research and development laboratories around the world, Sawyer SDK offers further compatibility with ROS and Open Source robotics tools, as well as an affordable solution to increase access to advanced robotics in the classroom.

Sawyer SDK includes several advanced features that allow users to visualize and control how the robot interacts with its environment.

Sawyer SDK now integrates with the popular Gazebo Simulator, which creates a simulated world that will visualize the robot and its contact with the environment, allowing researchers to run and test code in the simulation before running it on the robot.

Sawyer’s Gazebo integration is completely open source, allowing students to run simulations from their individual laptops without a robot until they’re ready to test the code in real time.

This approach allows professors to provide students with access to the industry-leading collaborative robot.

In addition to the Gazebo integration, Sawyer SDK includes a new motion interface that allows researchers to program the robot in Cartesian space. This development lowers the barriers for motion planning for programmers without a full robotics background.

The new release also allows researchers to leverage new impedance and force control.

Sawyer SDK also includes support for ClickSmart, the family of gripper kits that Rethink announced in 2017 to create a fully integrated robotic solution.

Scott Eckert, president and CEO, Rethink Robotics, says: “Rethink’s robots are used in the world’s leading research institutions, which provides us with a wealth of feedback on what our research customers really want.

“As we have with all of our SDK releases, we’re continuing to set the standard in research with industry-leading features that allow universities and corporate labs to push the field of robotics forward and publish their research faster.”

Sawyer SDK is being piloted in robotics programs at multiple universities, including Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, Georgia Institute of Technology and Northwestern University.

Stanford’s Vision and Learning Lab works on endowing robots with diverse skills for both industrial and day-to-day personal robotics applications.

Dr Animesh Garg, postdoctoral researcher in the Stanford University department of computer science, says: “Robotics is a field that combines technological and engineering skills with creativity, and the inventiveness our students have shown so far with the robots has been astounding.”

Dr Garg and his team of researchers have put Sawyer to use executing tasks directly from virtual reality input using automatic decomposition in simpler activities. Sawyer is also used for ongoing work in learning to use simple tools, such as hammers and screwdrivers.